The Year’s Best - Japan top Combat Sports nation in 2018

Another exciting sporting year is drawing to a close, and it is time for us to reveal the final rankings in GSN’s unique sport groups,

starting with those for which the year-end table is already definitive.

Japan was the top nation in Combat Sports in 2018, winning the sport group ahead of Russia and Italy, and reclaiming the title it had first won in 2016. Confirmation that, after topping the sport group for seven years in succession between 2009 and 2015, Russia has definitely found a worthy opponent at the top of the Combat Sports world.

The group aggregates the results of an interesting mix of sports: from Judo, Karate and Taekwondo to Amateur Boxing, Wrestling in its two variants, Greco-Roman and Free Wrestling, and Fencing. In 2018, there were no major world Amateur Boxing and Taekwondo tournaments to track for GSN, but all the other sports featured hotly contested World Championships. As many as 77 different countries scored points in Combat Sports, from America Samoa to Uzbekistan!